Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or its Characters. Also, this applies to all chapters because I'm tired of saying it (lol).
Chapter 7
"Tell me about him."
Megumi knew exactly who the Captain was referring to, but it wasn't like Megumi was going to let her know that. "Who, Captain? You mean that boy we saw at the last port? The one with the curly hair and really hot forearm tattoo?"
The Captain snorted, flinging a piece of bread she was about to put in her mouth at Megumi. "Kami, no, you horny weirdo. How old are you anyways?"
Megumi laughed as she brought her forearms up hardheartedly to block the incoming projectile. "I'm only like five hundred and fifty years old now. I'd be like what, thirteen in human years? I think I'm allowed to think people are cute by now, Captain."
The Captain ran a tired hand through her short crop of hair, sighing and stabbing at some of the meat on a platter with the hand holding her dagger. "I didn't say you couldn't find people attractive, Meg, it's the people you're drawn to that cause a problem." As if to emphasize her point, she impaled one of the larger strips of meat on her knife and brought it to her mouth, inspecting it. "Always the people who could certainly stir up trouble. You're just like the first mate," she said, but that last part comes out closer to a whine. "I'm never going to be able to retire with peace of mind if my crew keeps up like this."
Megumi laughd wholeheartedly at this, even if the comparison to the first mate feels slightly insulting. Though Megumi could admit (never to the Captain - she'd never let Megumi forget it) that she was attracted to powerful people, she'd be quick to defend herself with something along the lines of "Well, who wouldn't be?" before huffing and turning away. In truth, Megumi couldn't exactly place what triggered her specific tastes - she couldn't care either way in those years before she turned two hundred, but ever since meeting the Captain and making that deal some two hundred years ago (well over the time Toga should have come for her, she thought on a tangent sourly), she'd been quick to catch little crushes for people who looked like they could literally destroy her in a fight.
There were times in her memory of those fifty blissful years with Toga and Kimi that seemed blurry, not completely whole, and Megumi could only wonder if the explanation for her current "type" lay somewhere in those vague moments.
Megumi watched without really paying attention as Captain decided the meat she was scrutinizing was fit for consumption, She chewed thoughtfully, resting her cheek in her hand and staring out one of the windows at the place where the sky met the sea. Megumi's eyes followed hers to see a passing gull briefly make an appearance through the pane before flapping out of sight once more. Megumi sighed, and not for the first time wondered what it would be like to be able to fly where you pleased all the time.
"What's your name?" Megumi asked suddenly, and was rewarded with the full weight of the Captain's gaze trained on her. Megumi hadn't been prepared to be the focal point of her attention so quickly, and to disguise this, she reached to the table and took a quick drink from her cup.
"Don't you already know my name, Meg?" The Captain's silky smile slipped out, and the hand that wasn't propping her face up toyed with her blade absently, flipping it over her knuckles in a manner that was really impressive considering she wasn't paying attention to what she was doing.
Megumi shook her head, this time reaching for one of the fruit platters. "Not the name that comes with the ship. I mean, your real one."
Captain hummed thoughtfully as she eyed the berries Megumi tossed in her mouth. "And why the sudden interest?"
"I've always been interested," Megumi said truthfully. "I've been one among your crew for two hundred years now, and I've told you lots about myself and how I came to be passed out in that forest. And while I feel like I know a lot about you - your soft spot for abandoned children, your weird obsession with pots with birds on them - but sometimes I catch you gazing off into the ocean by yourself, and I wonder if what you've told us is really all there is to you." Feeling sort of awkward, Megumi tried to lessen her statement with a shrug. "I figured a name was as good of a place to start as any."
The Captain studied Megumi from across the table laden with food, and for a while the only thing Megumi was conscious of was the gentle rocking of the ship and her Captain's emerald eyes trained on her. Finally, Captain smiled, and it wasn't her normal one - that smile was full of mischief and satisfaction; this one seemed caring and soft.
"My given name is Shimizu Hamasaki. Rather prophetic of the profession I'd one day find myself in, ne?"
When those words reached Megumi from where she sat, the younger woman couldn't hold back the grin that burst forth.
"Stop that," Shimuzi laughed, throwing another scrap of bread her way. "Really, Meg, I'm going to start training you to better mask your emotions. It'll be too easy for people to take advantage of you if they know exactly what you're thinking."
"You'll gain way too many wrinkles before you even turn two thousand if you keep worrying like that," Megumi countered, but her mind was still focused on the confession she had been given. So, the Captain's name was Shimuzi. Megumi felt almost as if she had unlocked a deeper level in the bond that she shared with the older woman - youkai, actually, but she remained smugly secretive as to what kind of youkai - and Megumi was elated to feel this close to someone else after all this time.
Of course, that thought only served to remind her of the last person she brought close to herself, and Megumi felt that faint-yet-familiar ache in her chest from the memory.
Almost as if Shimuzi could detect where her thoughts were headed (or maybe she was just remembering her earlier question), the Captain suddenly asked her once again to tell her about Toga. Sensing Megumi's hesitation (she had been hesitating?), Shimuzi added, "I've been curious about how someone can so completely change the way you look at the world in so little time."
Despite where her thoughts had been going a moment prior, Megumi found herself smiling. "Some people are just like that," she said, and Toga's gentle smile came into view as clear as it had been the day he found her, tired and hungry, shivering and alone. "Some people were just destined to help others." The word destiny had Megumi frowning the second she stopped talking. Some people, she added silently, should never have been given the power to weave destinies.
The Captain smiled heartwarmingly at Megumi's words, clueless to her secret thoughts and feelings, and it was then that Megumi realized that perhaps she was not as transparent as the youkai pirate thought.
There was no light filtering in through the trees when Megumi slipped away from her dream and into the waking world, and so she pondered briefly if it was still nighttime.
Then she remembered she was blind.
It seemed a silly thing to her the moment after she had the thought, and Megumi pondered how deeply she must have slept in order to forget something so . . . painfully unforgettable. As Megumi resigned herself to the fact that she was certainly awake now and in full control of her mental and physical senses, she idly reminisced over the memories that had surfaced in her dreams. Megumi tried not to make a habit out of obsessing over figures from her past. Usually that sort of thing resulted in feelings she wasn't quite comfortable acknowledging, like guilt or abandonment or that pure form of loathing that only someone who felt they had been utterly wronged could feel. While Megumi certainly was mindful of all the ways her former centuries had shaped and guided her, whenever she found herself trying to drag what was once past into the present she found herself in an almost childlike state of vulnerability and curiosity.
That was why, as much as she wanted to ask her travelling partner - who she now knew, irrefutably, had to be one of the sons of Toga (unless someone had managed to actually fell the rightful possessor and claim their weapon, which she highly doubted) - she would not mention the fatherly inu's name. There was logic behind her decision, of course. For starters, the daiyoukai's icily detached tone when the name of his father fell from Megumi's lips. That had been enough for Megumi to understand that whatever the relationship the two shared, trying to discuss topics stemming in that direction with a stranger/hired healer was off limits. Megumi couldn't find the energy to feel offended by the fact that clearly this inu had no idea what sort of relation Megumi once had with Toga, and that small twinge of something small and slightly dejected rose involuntarily from inside Megumi as she wondered if Toga had ever mentioned Megumi after she had, probably in his eyes, vanished.
But there were other reasons for her restraint too. Considering the youkai had said he would be taking her to his home, where he said his ward currently was, it was almost completely likely that he would be leading her to the shiro of the Western Lands that Megumi had once been brought to by Toga. If that was in fact their destination, then all Megumi had to do was keep her inquiries to herself until she was able to see Toga in the flesh once more; to be granted a chance to find answers for all the questions the cruel and vulnerable voices inside of her had asked since the day she saw him last. A small, fleeting train of thought reminded her with dry humor that before the whole "sword pulsing incident," as she had come to call it, Megumi had been on guard against the inu daiyoukai possibly trying to trick her into once again finding herself the subject of her twin dragon's violent threat neutralization attempts.
Lastly, there was a slightly more private reason that Megumi in part didn't even want to admit to herself. Megumi in part prided herself on how well she was able to keep her emotions intact; how well she was able to control what she said and what she allowed people to see of her. However, for all her tact and control it fell apart almost too easily when it came to the people that she had made emotional connections with as a young girl. People like Toga, Kimi and Shimizu, for instance. Those were people that despite her best efforts, she could not ever bring herself to close that final gate in her near impenetrable manners. She supposed that some part of her irrationally didn't want to treat them with that mysteriously delicate manner she had developed in order to keep people exactly as far away from her as they had been before they tried to engage her or grow closer. It was a skill born from traumas related to the consequences of the wrong people finding out too much about what she was - neither human nor demon in nature - and while necessary as she knew it to be, she found it lost much of its power with those people who had for better or worse claimed parts of her heart.
Megumi wouldn't have minded it, if it weren't for the rather unexpected side effect - if someone knew her past well enough, they could use those key vulnerabilities to in turn weaken her outer defenses and worm their way through the gates she had started to develop in her most recent centuries of life. Something, Megumi knew, would not do at all.
And seeing as Megumi was not completely sure who the hell she was travelling with, she decided it was better to avoid touchy conversations altogether until she was damn sure she could trust the truth - the whole one, at that - with him. In hindsight, Megumi had already given away too many hints concerning Toga already, considering that major fuck-up she had straight off. Megumi had to bite back a growl of frustration at her situation. How to not look like a sword hadn't deeply bothered her. How to not let it slip that she learned to fight from a crew of pirate youkai. How to not reveal more information about her nature.
How to do all of this, without being able to study her opponent's face to see what he was already starting to hint and grow suspicious of.
"Woman," came a sudden voice, low and the notes of a singular word tinged with the barest hints of a natural growl, "you have been conscious for some time."
Megumi attempted to breathe deeply, to recenter herself to the present, and when she did she caught whiffs of the coppery tang of blood still relatively near. Megumi latched onto the sharp detail, letting her mind pull itself completely from its contemplative fog as she honed in her senses. "I see you didn't bother cleaning camp while I was out," Megumi said with an airiness she didn't feel, even as the irony of her first few words clung to the air around her like a personal gray cloud of soreness and self-pity.
Megumi was growing very quickly to hate her current state of affairs.
The only other living body nearby said nothing as Megumi rose, remembering rather sluggishly that she hadn't bothered to drape her outer kimono around her like before and had left it untied around her frame instead. So Megumi fastened it then, wondering how badly messed up her clothes currently were. Privately she had been smug at the result of the impromptu fight for her life during the night; as far as she knew her clothes hadn't taken any hits, and neither had Megumi - something that could have been dangerously fatal in her current state. However, all thoughts of wardrobe preservation had swiftly left her head after that sword had decided to talk to her.
"I hope I don't look too far from presentable," Megumi found herself saying, but if it was to her temporary companion or to herself she wasn't quite sure. Inwardly, that tiny part of her that liked to think irrelevant things wondered what Toga would think if he saw her approaching his shiro covered in someone else's blood. She had never killed when she was with him; it had all come after, once her life had actively been in danger. She wondered what Toga would think.
To her surprise, the inu actually answered -
"Hn."
- sort of.
Nevertheless Megumi took it as a sign to perhaps elaborate, trusting habit more than conscious thought to carry a small conversation while she turned her real attention to remembering where she had put her footwear the night before. "It would hardly stand to make a first impression that served to lessen your standing image by my mere association, wouldn't you think?" Megumi couldn't help the tiny surge of irritation she felt when she couldn't immediately locate the last part of her wardrobe. While she loathed the idea of using her hands to scour the ground near her improvised leaf bed, she loathed the idea of wasting precious reserves of power to find fucking shoes of all things more. She had just resigned herself to the silent humiliation of fumbling like a blind fool when she felt very suddenly the abrupt breaching of her personal bubble, done in what she knew was deliberateness but for what reason she could not guess.
"You will be given a replacement of your current outfit," the daiyoukai stated, his voice coming from above her but not absurdly so since she was standing. She felt rather than sensed as he slowly seemed to lower himself to her height, then lower, then lower, until his voice came from somewhere near the height that her thighs reached. What the hell was he doing? "A replacement will suffice until after the necessary actions upon your arrival have been taken." Then before Megumi could even wonder further he was rising again, voice back in its normal place above her.
Then he did something that shocked her. Without warning or preamble, Megumi felt the barest hint of his claws grazing over the skin of her left elbow as he almost gently guided her arm up from where it rested at her side, allowing those little traces to trail their way further down her arm away from her elbow, eliciting a small shiver from the woman. The daiyoukai stopped his uncharacteristic ministrations once his hand reached hers, and he guided and brushed over it in a way that soon had her palm facing open and up, as if she was prepared to accept something in it. Megumi found herself parting her lips to ask something, anything, but then his voice claimed the air between them. When he spoke again this time, Megumi realized that this time he was speaking directly to her, his tone measured and still characterized by that alluringly deep rumble of his.
"And at such a time when you've completed your tasks, should you wish it you may indulge yourself in one of the bath houses." With one deceptively lackadaisical stroke of a finger as his hand shifted under hers emphasizing the word indulge, Megumi might even have acknowledged to herself that the faint contact and that voice of his were kind of little turn ons if the sheer weight of mortification didn't hit her with the force of a tsunami before the thought could properly form.
Because at the end of that sentence, the youkai's other hand had placed something in Megumi's open palm, and then the entire whatever-that-just-was that was hanging in the air between them evaporated immediately after.
Her fucking shoes.
He had found, knelt down, and retrieved her fucking shoes for her.
Megumi wished for a moment that he could be blind for a second, just long enough so that he wouldn't have detected the undoubtedly obvious embarrassment that she felt and had been too . . . distracted to have caught properly before it was displayed all over her face. Megumi's fingers latched onto the source of her current predicament, resting unawares in her palm, and turned away quickly in hopes of salvaging something of the image she hopefully had presented from the day prior. Unfortunately for her, he still had one hand below hers and the other still holding onto the zori.
"I am curious," he admitted, his hold on her still relaxed but giving the clear impression that she won't be scurrying away just yet. "You sensed your attackers. You sensed where This One watched. You sensed the pursuers I felled, and more, sensed how they had met their end. And yet" - Megumi could practically hear his smirk - "you cannot locate your sandals?"
Megumi bristled, partly out of defense against his perception of her and also from her current situation. Megumi did not like to feel threatened; did not like to do delicate dances of power and subtle displays of dominance and superiority. She did not like whatever message he was currently trying to send her through body language alone.
"I can locate anything I choose, much as I can locate exactly what ails your ward. But these things require power; I cannot afford to spend it frivolously." Megumi tried to rein in her defensive tone, but found it inexplicably difficult at the moment. After a beat of silence, she chalked it up to just a jarring past couple of hours.
She noted as the current captor of her hand spoke again, except this time there seemed to be an added level of thoughtfulness. "Some level of power is required from you to fight adequately, then?"
Apparently it was then that that annoying part of Megumi's brain that liked to think useless thoughts spoke up. Adequately? He found her display last night adequate, and nothing more? Part of Megumi found herself almost scowling at that, while another part - thankfully the bigger one - was still focused on what he had asked her. While Megumi wanted to immediately deny his claim, the more she pondered the more she wondered if she could have managed as well as she did without the small power she had expelled. She took a second to re-frame her thoughts, and biting back a sigh, she answered him.
"I won't deny tactical use of my abilities can enhance my rates of success. However, in near all of the cases I have encountered since learning to fight I have found it to be fairly unnecessary. My situation this time is uniquely crafted so that despite my current drawbacks I cannot risk being subject to a surprise attack or a miscalculation on my part. Such things can harm me, as my current lack of sight is not one I can control." Megumi cut herself off promptly after that, lips pursing slightly in frustration. Of course she didn't want to use her power, but if she hadn't? Her other senses were not nearly as acute and she may likely have engaged in a fight without being able to detect the other two threats there had been. She might have made a fool's mistake if she hadn't known the inu daiyoukai had been watching her, perhaps even ready to step in should a real problem arise. Megumi wasn't completely sure what would have happened had she not used her powers, but even if it made her seem weak to Toga's potential son she decided then that she would not regret it.
She wondered if he had sensed a change in her disposition, because when her companion (who was still too close for Megumi's taste) spoke to her again that thoughtful tone was gone and replaced by something that sounded a lot like resignation. "Very well," he decided, and at that moment he also released her. "We will travel now with your arrival to my home as our top precedent." Her head tilted at that, but he did not give her long to consider speaking up before he continued. "So long as you honor your end of our deal, This One shall ensure that you will not need to use your . . . abilities . . . outside of healing my ward."
Despite his obvious unsureness when it came to labeling Megumi's gift, she couldn't help but notice what he was essentially implying. Focus on healing my ward, and I shall focus on protecting you. In a weird way, it was sort of nice. Megumi wished that she could trust him with something like her life so easily like that.
"How can I trust you?" she blurted, voice fairly quiet, but that didn't detract from the surprise Megumi felt inwardly at having gone through and essentially voiced her thoughts. If he noticed her own surprise, he didn't comment on it.
"This One gives his word," he said, and this time there was an unprecedented seriousness to him. He must take his honor seriously indeed. "No harm will befall you while our agreement is intact."
Megumi noticed vaguely that her arm had fallen back to its place by her side, its momentum gently knocking her zori against her side. She wished she could see him. For all she knew, she was currently trying valiantly not to smile gleefully. She wished there was a way for her to know on some fundamental level that his promise would bind itself to her, preventing all foreseeable harms from reaching her person. She wished and she wished but there would be no guarantee; Megumi had grown to accept that no matter how badly you wished for it, you cannot change someone's fate for your personal merit or gain.
Megumi had made that mistake once and she would not again. This time, she would take a leap of faith. Besides, if he really wanted to break her he could have snapped her spine in two by now. And really if she was being brutally honest with herself she didn't have many choices or options right now when it came to getting this seal off or finding her way through a forest alone. So, mind already made up, Megumi tottered on one foot while she slipped one of her zori on the other. She switched feet and did the same before raising herself up slightly higher, straightening her back and letting her face smooth over in an expression she trusted to convey her will.
"I accept your word," she told him, pretending for all the world that she wasn't the least bit wary still. Megumi briefly went over everything that she had brought to their camp and confirmed a moment later that she had everything and was ready to depart. "So," she finally said, tilting her head slightly and looking up to where she felt his face probably was, "how exactly are we travelling from here on?"
Sesshomaru admittedly had been expecting more of a response when he informed the woman before him that he planned to fly the two of them back to his shiro. However, she had remained curiously impassive, and the more he thought about it, the more he figured he could reason why.
She had been frustratingly aloof since awakening at dawn. He had let her lay there without commenting, wondering if she was trying to do something while giving away the pretense that she was still asleep. He had noticed her brows furrow occasionally and her lips purse once or twice, and he had realized she had merely been thinking. Sesshomaru's eyes had narrowed slightly so that less of his vision was focused on the things surrounding her. He had wanted to know what Tenseiga had shown or told her, but if her behavior was a clear indication she was still sorting through the event herself. Sesshomaru considered himself to be a patient man, and so he had decided to let the thing rest until it inevitably came up once more. After all, what sort of hunter would he be if he could not bide his time for the ideal opening?
Considering that, he felt her lack of a reaction to flying was warranted as her thoughts seemed preoccupied with something she evidently felt to be more pressing.
Furthermore, he had a faint feeling that she found the situation relatively safe. After all, he had sort of promised to protect her from harm while she was in his care, and unless Sesshomaru wanted to betray the trust placed in him on acceptance of his word before they even got to Rin he would have to make very, very good on that promise. Upholding it was a trivial thing for someone with his power, but at the back of his mind he wondered what exactly he had claimed to be capable of protecting her against. He would be eager to pry into the curious tidbits he had garnered from the fight last night, but that too seemed to be something that would have to wait until later. Though the thought wasn't completely an aggravating one, Sesshomaru did not like to invest time in things that reaped unsatisfactory rewards. He wondered idly if the answers to her secrets would be worth the effort he knew it would take to get the woman to open up.
He had confirmed an earlier suspicion about things that took effort on his part to illicit reactions, and had been savagely pleased to find that the one that had thus far affected her the most - contact with him - had been a reaction that needed only the slightest of his attention to garner. Sesshomaru thought back to earlier with a smirk; her embarrassment had been almost humorous to watch, but it had been the fraction of a second before it registered that interested him more. Sesshomaru was a keen, intelligent creature, and he had been quick to notice when her thoughts drifted away from whatever she had been obsessing over since waking, and he noted with small doses of intrigue as her lips parted slightly and her expression grew towards something . . . dazed? Expectant?
He could not say with confidence what had come over her just before he placed those zori in her hand, but Sesshomaru found his natural inu curiosity almost deciding for him that he wanted to know what it had been. He had already decided that he would know all the woman sought to hide, and so this would be just another facet of the jewel he intended to unearth. Where did your mind go, woman?
Even still, it hadn't been long before his attentions had been pulled elsewhere. After making a promise stacked upon his honor, he had felt an almost instinctive urge to ensure she would be in decent conditions for travel. Sesshomaru's years of travel with Rin were quick to tell him what that entitled: the primary condition being satiated hunger. So the Lord of the Western Lands had left their temporary camp to hunt briefly, remaining in his humanoid body to avoid the wasted energy associated with transformations into his proud inu form. He would need decent energy levels to travel upon his cloud anyways, and with those thoughts in mind he had made a larger kill than he expected her capable of eating so that he too may restore his faculties before their journey.
The girl had questioned the necessity of flying after he had returned with the meat, reviving the fire to cook what he had brought from his hunt. Evidently, she figured him to be of a degree of skill that would be capable of protecting her should they opt instead to walk like originally planned, but he had countered that swiftly by pointing out if she truly believed that she would not have expelled power to fight when he was so near.
"You were near to watch," she said evenly, "and you had not promised such a thing to me. I took your silent observation as a cue that you wished to see what I was capable of." Megumi had not been wrong in her assumption, of course, but a part of him pushed his counter-point anyways.
"This One neautralized two of the youkai."
"How kind," she said, in a way that told him she didn't buy it for a second.
Sesshomaru fought the urge to sigh. "You have proved yourself a sufficient fighter, but you have also proved to be prone to further wastes of your restricted reserves. Flying to my shiro reduces how likely you are to expend further power."
The daiyoukai realized this was the first time he had called his home a shiro, but the ever-perplexing woman didn't seem surprised in the slightest. In fact, she looked as if she expected it. Just what had Tenseiga done?
Sesshomaru decided to turn his thoughts away from his betrayer of a weapon and back to conversations he had not told himself to revisit later. In doing so, he thought back to when he had first told the woman of their new method of travel. "You do not seem averse to flying," Sesshomaru stated, in that sort-of-an-invitation-to-elaborate-but-mostly-a-statement manner of speaking that he enjoyed the most.
"I have flown before," she offered simply, chewing thoughtfully. "Besides; I find the notion of the earth I have roamed beneath me less frightening than that of the near-endless oceans." The healer shrugged, but he had not missed the familiarity with which she spoke of the ocean. "Lesser evils, I suppose."
"Hn."
They finished the meat in silence, and after that Sesshomaru felt they had nothing more that needed to be done before they could embark on their way to the shiro. Megumi, however, clearly felt different.
"How long will it take us to get there?"
Sesshomaru glanced briefly at the position of the sun. Megumi had awoken not long before it had made its daily appearance, and despite her musings and their meal the sun was still plenty far from peaking in the sky.
"Mere hours," Sesshomaru decreed, eyeing the woman for any hint to her thoughts that might flicker up on her face. There. Perhaps . . . trepidation, then? What was she expecting to encounter once we arrived? The Lord's eyes narrowed fractionally. He did not like to be kept unaware of the affairs of those around him when they pertained to himself, as hers clearly did. Suddenly he wondered if Tenseiga had betrayed his identity to the woman, but she hadn't made any indication of knowing him as the Lord of the West - perhaps she thought him someone who lived in the Western shiro, not the Lord himself? That would explain her lack of surprise at his mention of his home being a shiro, and that would also in part explain her lack of formal respect. Latching onto this, like the deadly predator he was, he struck. "Once we arrive, you will be left undisturbed with my ward. You will not see the Lord or Lady until such time as your work has been deemed as completed for the day."
There. That same anticipation. Sesshomaru positively grinned (or as much of a grin as someone like him would openly give) as he honed in on the new weakness. The woman seemed wary of seeing the Lord of the shiro, and that filled Sesshomaru with a heady dose of eagerness. This, he decided, would be another lovely layer to her inevitable mortification upon realizing she had been traveling with the Lord of the Western Lands all along.
"I won't see the Lord or Lady till I've changed, then?" the healer asked, and Sesshomaru noted a faint relaxing of her shoulders. However, he was not done prodding this particular reaction, and so he coaxed it further.
"Perhaps," he agreed. "You seem reluctant to formally introduce yourself to those whose house you will be staying in. Perhaps you have no experience in formal introductions?" Sesshomaru was admittedly glad when she seemed displeased at the suggestion; he wouldn't have liked it if her unease stemmed from something as trivial as that.
"I've more experience than you, thank you," she said curtly yet politely, as Sesshomaru smirked at the self-added entry to things she would regret saying. He was mildly surprised, though, when she offered the barest of hints as to the source of her current reluctance. "It's just that . . . " her delicate hands gestured vaguely when she could not immediately find her words. "I have been away for some time."
Sesshomaru was starting to wonder where he was mistaking her words for something else. He knew instinctively that there was something he was missing, a frankly large piece that unsettled him for having yet to firmly locate it and string the whole mystery together. There had been a softer, less guarded edge to her voice at that last part, though Sesshomaru sensed her words were chosen to prevent something like that from being noticed. Wherever she thought they were going - he wasn't even completely sure she thought they were going to his shiro anymore - she undeniably had some sort of history there, one that seemed to evict strong enough emotions to penetrate that vague and distant manner of hers that had been prominent since he had first encountered her.
Sesshomaru wasn't completely sure what to make of the woman yet, but he knew this - that one way or another, for better or worse, he would find out exactly what lay beneath that front of hers when she stood before him in his shiro not as a stranger, but as one of the Lords of the Cardinal Lands.
All he had to do now was wait.
Author's Note:
So, here we are, chapter seven . . .
I wanted to clarify some things about age: at this moment in the story, the ages of some characters are as follows: Sesshomaru (900+), Megumi (800+), Katsumi (700)+, Inuyasha (150+). These will serve as sort of good references so I figured I'd include them early. Also, once we've had more flashback/memory/dream things and just in general more information, I'll likely put a timeline in a future AN so that those of you who're confused can better grasp the timeline.
Anywho, we got some more insight to Megumi (and kinda Sesshomaru), and some of the stuff here sets up for more later so it wasn't super progressive but it was necessary anyways.
Thank you for reading!
